This Bonkers American Horror Story Theory Explains How All the Seasons Are Connected

Creator Ryan Murphy has said for awhile now that all the seasons of American Horror Story are connected, but despite the occasional cross-over, cameo, and Easter egg, there hasn’t been a convincingly strong thread connecting the show’s various locations and time periods. Until now. A new theory floats the idea that Murphy is actually slowly retelling the story of Dante’s Inferno via Angeleno vampires, Floridian freaks, and New Orleanian witches. It may be pure fan invention, but the story checks out. After all, a healthy dose of Dante worked for Mad Men.

The first installment in Dante’s three-part Divine Comedy, Inferno, tells the story of Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell guided by the poet Virgil. Those circles are Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. I think it’s safe to say that most of those sins, including the unbaptized uncertainty of Limbo, could be easily applied to any of the seasons of American Horror Story, but, according to the theory floated on Red Herry, you can cast each year as a distinct circle of hell.

As TVGuide sees it, lust fits the theme of Season 1, with its pleather-clad S&M monster and various seductresses. Fraud could easily align with Season 2’s asylum where many of the inmates were interned under false pretenses. Treachery marks the coven of Season 3 where backstabbing was de rigueur. Season 4’s Elsa Mars was the epitome of greed. The residents of the Hotel Cortez in Season 5 are plagued by something Murphy has named the Addiction Demon. Is addiction just another word for gluttony?

All of this is a little flimsy. You could just as easily call Season 5 the lust season and any of them could be the violence year. But Murphy did pay homage to a Se7en-like exploration of modern-day deadly sins by introducing a Ten Commandments serial killer in Season 5. And the fact that each season is pretty neatly anchored to one location—the Murder House, the Asylum, the Coven, the Freakshow, the Hotel—makes the argument for circles a little firmer. But the most convincing angle of this theory is that Ryan Murphy keeps recycling actors like Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Kathy Bates, and more because he views their various characters as one soul cycling through the circles. Maybe Jessica Lange isn’t in this season because her character, Elsa Mars, finally repented and ascended to a sort of heavenly after-life populated by her friends in the Season 4 finale.

Compare that to the hellish fate of her character at the end of Season 3.

Dante’s Hell is for those who try to justify their sins, or refuse to repent. They’re trapped in a cycle. Then, so are we.

“They’re all connected,” Murphy said in 2014. “There’s definitely a rhyme or a reason and a connectedness to all of these seasons… They’re all very separate but there are clues every season that we’re now telling you how the different worlds are intertwined.” This ambitious vision of American Horror Story casts Ryan Murphy as Virgil and you, the viewer, as Dante. With five circles down, could there be just four more seasons of American Horror Story to go. Let me know when we get to the circle reserved for knotty pine.